Thank you, Jim. I am in absolute agreement with your remarks about AIS conventions in the past, in the present and what is possible for the future. Jeanne In a message dated 3/28/2010 5:08:41 P.M. Central Standard Time, cemahan@aol.com writes: Every year...through the Great Depression, interrupted only by WWII, AIS has held annual conventions. An organization does not keep growing by eliminating its annual conventions. How sad this is. Clarence
Clarence, Sad perhaps, but facts must be faced. As Dennis said, we have the garden tour members locked in but why can't we consider an educational convention together with a botanical garden? All of those conventions you referred to did not all have garden tours and many had very small attendance of less than 100 people. Several were basically business meetings. True, they were business meetings of great men and women of horticultural skill and fame, but they primarily visited the New York Botanical Garden, Cornell, Nashville (an iris hotbed of iris hybridizing) and Freeport, IL. The growth was after WWII along with the growth of the U.S. in general. Now we are mirroring the decrease in the U.S. of interest in organizations of any kind. Jim M. |